Page 12 of Pas de Trois
Chapter 3
Anya
I’m thankful Ezra encouraged me to rest on the plane. I’m surprised by the fact that I was able to sleep at all, let alone the remainder of the flight. For the first time in a long time, I felt safe aboard that plane, even when I knew it was only temporary. I knew Ezra would watch over me, and Nikolai was incapacitated, leaving all threats to my life behind on the ground.
We’d transferred to a helicopter after we landed at the Mikhailovs’ private airstrip in Russia. Ezra and the pilot dragged a bleeding Nikolai yet again from one aircraft to the other. We took off silently into the night, not a word from any of us as we approached the Mikhailovs’ vast landscape.
When we finally landed on the helipad in the middle of the dark forest, the pilot left us after assisting Nikolai once more, helping Ezra place him into the back of the car that had been left there. The three of us were alone to make the solemn, silent drive back to Mikhailov Manor.
We could have found his private doctor’s number on his cell phone and arranged for him to come and treat Nikolai at the manor, but we didn’t.
Nikolai had told Ezra not to and when I asked Nikolai myself, he insisted that we don’t call. He said there was no point, and I can’t for the life of me imagine why he seems to have given up. It’s as if he wants to die.
I think we all know logically that he is dying without treatment. He was shot hours ago, and the blood loss has been…overwhelming. I think he’s only survived this long to make the trip back to his homeland so he could die on his own terms. If I let myself think about it for too long, tears well behind my eyes, burning liquid that has no reason to exist because I won’t mourn his loss.
My captor, my master, my tormentor—he’s dying and I’m glad.
But then why does it hurt to think about?
I help as much as I can, but it’s Ezra who does the work to get Nikolai from the car across the threshold into Mikhailov Manor.
“Take me to the dance studio,” Nikolai manages before huffing out heavy breaths.
His face is pale, and blood continues to leak from his injury as Ezra drags him through the main entrance. Mikhailov Manor is large and empty, just as I remembered it being. But the atmosphere is particularly haunting now. My eyes follow the grand staircase up to the second floor. I feel as though the ghosts of Mikhailovs past watch as we bring the last of their line home to die.
The last Mikhailov is going to die.
My pulse kickstarts.
I follow Nikolai’s trail of blood to the dance studio, wrapped only in Ezra’s dress shirt since we’d left Vigo’s bloodied shirt on the plane. Ezra drags him with his arms hooked beneath Nikolai’s armpits, sweat glistening across his bare torso from the exertion of moving a body over and over again. Ezra pulls him across the threshold of the dance studio, finally setting him down in the center of the brightly-lit space.
“Okay.” Ezra takes a few deep breaths. “We’re here. Now tell her where the box is, or I will.”
The box?
“What box?”
Ezra talked to Nikolai on the plane while I rested. But all Ezra told me was that he’d promised Nikolai the opportunity to tell me everything himself when we arrived. I don’t know why it mattered to Nikolai or why Ezra agreed to it. I only know that Ezra is a better man than he gives himself credit for. I can imagine his heart wouldn’t allow him to deny a dying man’s last request—even when that man is vile and undeserving of sympathy.
“In Nobility Hall,” Nikolai says on a whisper. “The box is under my seat. You know my seat.” He’s gasping, struggling for air. “Hurry.”
Nikolai’s seat.
He always sat in the same spot for my performances in Nobility Hall. He’d chosen a favorite spot, and I’d always wondered why he picked it because I knew it wasn’t the best seat in the house. But it makes sense now. If he’s hiding something so important there—something that he claims will save me from the four families’ fury—then it serves to reason he would always sit there and remain in that very spot until everyone else had left after my performances.
“Keys,” I say, suddenly urgent to find this box and learn his secrets. “I need the keys.”
Ezra pulls the set of keys that he collected from Nikolai’s pocket and hands them to me.
“Stay with him,” I tell Ezra.
He gives me a nod and I take off on a jog, thankful for the burst of adrenaline that comes from the urgency of it all.
I jog past the main entrance, dash down the garden corridor, and rush to the locked door in the alcove. I find myself fumbling with the keys, my hands shaking. There may as well be someone behind me holding a gun to my head for the way I tremble.
Once the door is open, I move through the short hallway, quickly finding my way to the lobby of Nobility Hall. I take a breath as I stand before the two sets of double doors and slowly, I step forward. I pull one of the doors open wide and move into the darkness.
I head to the light booth to turn on the house lights and take no more than a moment to revel in the twinge of excitement that being in this space always gives me. The twinge has nothing to do with this theater and everything to do with my love of performing.
